Gates uses the question to argue that skilled professional work cannot normally be sustained without payment. In the context of An Open Letter to Hobbyists, he is responding to the widespread copying of software without payment to its developers. His point is that programming requires time, expertise and resources, and that people who produce software need an economic return if they are to continue doing such work professionally.

The quote therefore concerns the value of labour as well as the commercial conditions needed to support software development. Gates presents unpaid copying not simply as a question of individual use, but as an issue affecting whether programmers can afford to invest in creating and improving software. More broadly, the line can be applied to debates about compensation for skilled work, particularly where creative or intellectual products can be reproduced at little cost to the user.